Today we talk about Stephen Power, killer and car-psychotic, whose career towards homicide the gardai in the south-east did all they possibly could to curtail. He was repeatedly arrested and charged with speeding offences, yet given derisory punishments by the courts, until finally and inevitably he killed someone.
It is not easy to supply all the details of Stephen Power's criminal record because there is no central collating of traffic crimes. Stephen Power, killer, could have been breaking the speed laws all over Ireland without the Garda computer's knowledge.
This is what we know. There might be more. Throughout the period concerned, Stephen Power was driving as a courier. On December 1st 1995, he appeared before Waterford District Court charged with exceeding the 30 m.p.h. speed limit. He was fined £60.
On May 20th 1996, he appeared in Thomastown District Court on a similar charge for an offence committed just eight days after the above court appearance and was again fined £60.
Derisory fines
Six days later he was back in Thomastown Court on another speeding charge, and was this time fined £80.
Five days later, he appeared in Waterford District Court, where he was charged with exceeding the 40 m.p.h. speed limit and was this time fined £30.
So he was found to have been breaking various speed limits in September 1995, December 1995, February 1996 and March 1996 - yet had collected merely derisory fines, with no record of any endorsement, and he was still on the road as a courier, driving - God alone knows how dangerously. Yet even before this speed spree, he had been found guilty of driving without road tax or driving licence and of failing to obey a sign. Instead of being put off the road, as he surely should have been, he was fined a mere £40.
On September 16th 1996 he was in Thomastown Court, charged with speeding and with driving without insurance, and for the insurance charge was lost his licence for a year. He lodged an appeal, and could therefore continue driving pending the appeal, which was heard at Kilkenny on January 28th, 1997 and which, mirabile dictu, he won. He was lawfully back on the road.
But this Kilkenny appearance dealt merely with the insurance charge from Thomastown. For exceeding the general speed limit of 55 m.p.h. on May 2nd, 1996, the Thomastown court fined him £130, and banned him from driving for a year.
Sentence deferred
However, this sentence was also deferred pending appeal, and thus it was that Stephen Power, killer-to-be, remained on the road. And even now, his appetite for traffic offences remained undiminished: he appeared before Bagnelstown court on some traffic charge unspecified in the record and was fined.
His appeal against the speeding ban was scheduled for Carlow Circuit Court on February 28th 1997, but, presumably because of the identity of the presiding judge, he abandoned the appeal and walked out of the court, with the suspension of the licence affirmed. James Phelan had three days to live.
For far from going off the road, Stephen Power continued to drive as a courier, now without licence or insurance. On March 3rd last year, he was driving his courier vehicle at speed near Limerick Junction. He lost control, his vehicle veered over to the wrong side of the road and hit the oncoming car containing James Phelan and his wife Elizabeth, who was four months pregnant. James was killed outright.
Last March 11th, Stephen Power, killer, was found guilty of dangerous driving causing death, of driving with no insurance, of driving without a licence. The court was told of five previous speeding convictions. Despite his appalling record, despite the death of a young father killed in his prime, despite the calamity which had befallen a young mother, Judge Olive Buttimer did not imprison Stephen Power. Instead, she suspended a three-year jail sentence, gave him a 20-year driving ban and fined him £2,000.
No order was made concerning damages to Elizabeth Phelan. The Insurance Bureau of Ireland - namely the plain innocent drivers of Ireland who do not break the law - will cover the compensation to this young woman. She is still devastated by this non-accidental tragedy, and must raise her two children, Jonathan, and Jaimie (born after her father's death and named after him) alone. Yet Stephen Power, killer, is free, and will be allowed to drive again when he is 46. Meanwhile, he is starting a courier business again as a non-driver.
Dangerous drivers
What is there to say about this monstrous farce? What is there to say about a court system which so lightly punishes the recidivist dangerous driver, and which suspends punishment pending appeal?
What is there to say about courts which seem to make a point of allowing dangerous drivers to remain on the road because they drive for a living? (Do we similarly put dangerous surgeons or dangerous airline pilots back to work?)
What is there to say about a system which repeatedly had Stephen Power, potential killer, in its grasp, and which repeatedly let him ago until finally he killed?
And what is there to say about a system which requires the law-abiding motorists of Ireland to pay for the consequences of Stephen Power's homicidal psychosis and which enables him to set up in the courier business again, free of any financial obligation to the woman he widowed and the children he made fatherless?
Nothing.